Cambridge Assessment Podcasts

In this seminar a panel of key staff will discuss the issues surrounding comparability and will engage in debate with the audience about methods for establishing comparability, public understanding of the issues and directions for the future. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A frequent claim of awarding bodies is that standards are comparable across assessments in different subject areas. And if they are not, the awarding bodies can make them comparable through appropriate statistical techniques, or so the argument goes. It is not surprising that in many countries such brave statements are received with suspicion and mistrust by the stakeholders. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Assessment industry (awarding bodies) should refocus its activities on applied research and development in assessment methodology. The industry should produce assessment tools and professional development for teachers and a much slimmed down external verification service. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

How can we improve the quality of mark schemes and their use? Ayesha will outline a taxonomy of the kinds of mark schemes that are currently used in examining in the UK and discuss what makes a good mark scheme, based on the best practice observed in the study quoted above. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This seminar will present the findings from a research project analysing students' performances and attitudes towards modularisation in two GCSE subjects. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Research findings suggest that, due to a lack of appreciation for the rationale behind the modular system, no control of resits and the highly competitive nature of selection by universities, the resit policy has produced some undesirable effects when it comes to actual practice in sixth-form education. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Widening participation in Higher Education crucially depends upon recruiting more young people from vocational pathways. But what sorts of opportunities do such learners access in Higher Education? Do these offer real opportunities for increasing social mobility and raising earnings? Is there any parity of esteem between academic and vocational progression routes? What are the challenges that students from more vocational programmes face when they enter Higher Education? How can we better support their learning and so improve success rates? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Interpreting test performance (against the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) in this case) is at the heart of test validity. Thus if CEFR alignment is important for an exam, it should impact every relevant stage of design and administration. It cannot be a one-off exercise. Cambridge ESOL's approach will be presented as an illustration of this. We will also present the SurveyLang project coordinated by Cambridge ESOL, due to deliver the European Survey on Language Competences in 2011. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This seminar will trace the history of investigations into inter-subject comparability in England, aiming to shed light on implicit and, occasionally, explicit statements of principle. It will analyse the emergence of early implicit conceptions and will illustrate how potential alternative conceptions have largely remained unrecognised, despite their potential utility. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ofqual's regulation stretches from the early years through the key stages, GCSEs, A levels and diplomas to vocational and occupational qualifications. Ofqual monitors assessments, reviews standards and has a major programme focused on reliability. What has the regulator found in its regulatory work on the significant developments that 2010 has brought? How do the outcomes help Ofqual fulfil its mission to ensure that these assessments are valued and trusted by learners, users and the wider public? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This presentation will review the design features to be taken into account if systems of assessment in which teacher judgement has a role are to be robust enough to meet the expectations of students, policy-makers and the wider public. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This seminar examines the implications of international human rights standards for assessment practice. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Good science courses provide plenty of opportunities for students to explore and develop their understanding of scientific ideas through practical work. It is often argued that, to encourage school practical work, the students’ practical skills need to be formally assessed by examination or coursework but is this really necessary and if so, what is the best way to do this? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

UCAS applications to UK Higher Education institutions, the number of A-levels awarded an A grade and high achieving students exceeding the minimum entry requirements are all on the increase. In this context, the increasing numbers of well-qualified applicants presents institutions with a real challenge: how can they choose between applicants in a way that is consistent, fair, transparent and predictive of their future academic success? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

New GCSE qualifications were introduced for first teaching in England, Wales and Northern Ireland September 2009. These new GCSEs included changes such as controlled assessment, unitisation and entry, aggregation and terminal rules. This seminar discusses See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dr Mary Richardson, Centre for Beliefs, Rights and Values in Education, Roehampton University, considers the value of assessing Citizenship in the context of the findings from an empirical study conducted in secondary schools across England. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Seminar highlighting how an explicit focus on Critical Thinking can enhance the attainment of pupils of all backgrounds and abilities, following recent research. Importantly, the research showed that pupils who study Critical Thinking as a discrete subject at AS level tend to do better in their other A level subjects, whether they are taking sciences, languages or humanities. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Guest speaker Randy Bennet looks at six inter-related issues in formative assessment (aka, ‘Assessment for Learning’). The issues concern the definition of formative assessment, the claims commonly made for its effectiveness, the limited attention given to domain considerations in its conceptualisation, the underrepresentation of measurement principles in that conceptualisation, the teacher-support demands formative assessment entails, and its place in the larger educational system. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Concerns that ‘standards are falling’ continue to dominate public debate. What are the sources of data to which we should turn to illuminate issues of standards, and what degree of confidence should we have in the different explanations of trends in standards? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Guest speaker Professor David Raffe explains how caution and care is essential in order to draw robust conclusions from international comparisons about different national education systems. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.